Sweet Seduction Stripped (Sweet Seduction, Book 7)

by Nicola Claire

  Hacking Bryan's code was the first thing I hit. And although it did require some clever moves on my part, and I did slip inside his own personal safeguards without detection, I couldn't help thinking I needed to up my game in order to truly pull this hack off. Bryan was good, but finding his signature in amongst the code was the key, like the key I'd left at the back door to C&C, it was useful. But so was a sledge hammer. I needed more.

  Nick appeared on screen and when Ric released the lock, slipped inside.

  "The building's clear, from what we can tell," he advised. "Brook and Koki are in situ, watching and waiting for the shit to hit the fan. Everyone else is doing what they need to do, so that just leaves us."

  Ric nodded and turned back to his screen, so I took that as my cue to ignore Nick's presence and get back to work as well. It didn't take long for me to forget he was even there, code pulled me in and consumed me.

  "He's been a cop for ten years," Ric suddenly said, dragging me kicking and screaming out of the virtual world I'd been walking just then.

  "A long time," Nick commented. "Do we have a name?"

  "Not yet, he's protected."

  "By who?"

  "The top," Ric shot back.

  "Why?" I mused.

  "Because he's valuable," Nick guessed.

  I let a slow breath of air out and returned to my screen. A few minutes later, Ric broke my concentration again.

  "Five years ago his record was wiped."

  Five years. It was five years ago that Ric had said ASI could trace Jaxon's history to. Any further back and he simply did not exist at all. There was something there. I just had to look at it from a different angle.

  Huh. Maybe that was the answer. A different slant on something you'd always seen in only one light before.

  Jaxon was expecting me to hack C&C. He probably even knew I'd use Bryan Messing to achieve it. That made complete and logical sense.

  But would he expect me to use someone else? Blair Tate?

  No, how about Sala Lauofo? Who as second in command would have top level clearance.

  Sala might have been a thug, but he had unparalleled access to Jaxon and C&C.

  Why?

  Jaxon had known I'd met with Ric at the Irish Pub. He'd said as much the night he'd shown me the image of Eric Shaw killing a man on his knees. Why that picture? Why that one in particular? Why not one of Nick Fucking Anscombe instead of one of his arch Nemesis’s employees?

  Because he knew I'd met with Ric. Because Sala had told him. Despite my pole dance for the thick headed oaf. Despite Jaxon always threatening anyone if they so much as looked at me wrong.

  Jaxon knew about Ric. He knew about Sala's little side blackmail with me. And he didn't even bat an eyelash.

  Because Sala was as good as family. Sala was his trusted right hand man.

  Sala was my key.

  But I had to be clever about it.

  I used Bryan's signature code to crack C&C as planned, but I didn't stop there. I was in, and they probably knew it. But now I was "Bryan" hacking Sala's login - entirely not expected - and using what I'd like to think is an exceptionally brilliant piece of computer programming; a line of code that wipes out your type written text as soon as you enter it, but doesn't erase the command.

  I flicked a glance over at Ric, my co-writer, inappropriately thinking what little baby geniuses we could have in the future, and then almost losing my train of thought picturing Ric with baby Ollie in his arms and how adorable they had both looked.

  Get it together, Lane!

  Shaking myself, I slipped into Sala's profile, left a very convoluted and zig-zagging trail back through cyberspace, visiting Luxembourg more than once, to make it look like the real me, who had been posing as Bryan Messing, lost my way and got unceremoniously booted out of C&C.

  I set up a self perpetuating programme to make it look like I was trying to hack Bryan again at a different angle and crash through C&C's now newly morphed security walls, and watched with delight as the system moved to challenge the fake me, leaving Sala free and unencumbered to do as he damn well pleased.

  Well, to do as I damn well pleased.

  "I have never," Ric said, his voice sounding slightly awed, "seen such beauty in action before."

  My gaze moved over to him, seeing Nick out of the corner of my eyes smirking, then following it up with a frown when he tried to decipher my code on the screen.

  "You are beyond clever," Ric said, moving to face me completely, ignoring the Police website shot he had up on his screen. "You are out of this world. A true genius. I am... stunned, Amber. Absolutely stunned."

  I suddenly felt self conscious.

  "It's just code."

  "Baby, it's not just code, it's utter brilliance."

  I shook my head at him.

  "You're biased," I pointed out.

  "I'm fucking turned on, that's what I am."

  "Ric!"

  "Dancer!"

  "Guys!" Nick yelled. "Someone care to tell me what's going on?"

  My head turned to look at Nick, but snagged on Ric's screen shot again.

  A name flashed at the top of the page. It meant nothing to me, other than the fact that I was betting it belonged to the man I had slept with for twenty months. A man I had known as someone else.

  "Mitchell Braden Wallis," I said. "Is that who he really is?"

  Ric spun back to look at his screen. "Oh, it's finished running." I assumed he meant a programme he'd started, and hadn't been aware the name had flashed up on the screen. Too busy following my "brilliance."

  I watched as he stared at the screen contemplatively, and then slowly turned back to face Nick, eyebrows raised in query.

  Nick looked just as thoughtful, but equally as unmoved as Ric.

  "That name still means nothing to me," he declared with a shake of his head.

  I stared at the screen, trying to jolt a memory, a recalled image of that name I may have seen somewhere before. It was Jaxon's real identity and it should have meant something. But neither of these men recognised it. I'd been sure we'd find an answer when we uncovered his name.

  I'd been wrong.

  Nothing stood out from those memories I'd already accessed on the C&C system, but I was determined to figure this out. My mind started flicked through letters, documents, files anything at all that I'd seen in passing in Jaxon's office. There was a key to cracking this puzzle, and as Ric and Nick kept talking in the background, throwing ideas around but really just voicing wild guesses, I went back through what we'd found out today.

  Five years ago Jaxon had gone under cover, had his true identity wiped by the Police.

  I concentrated my recollections on anything that could have referenced that date, but it was before I'd met Jaxon, so pulling that particular time-frame out of the pile wasn't possible. I decided to stick with timing being the key, and started working my way back through images trying to pick up a moment that might have signified something important in Jaxon's life.

  I hit the jackpot nine months ago. A letter I'd inadvertently seen from a woman named Lillian Wallis. A relation, I now guessed. In it she spoke of someone called Roan. But who this Roan was, I didn't know.

  I came out of my memories to find Ric back at work trying to dig deeper into Jaxon's profile on the Police website and Nick silently watching from over his shoulder.

  "I don't suppose," I started, making both men pause to look at me, "that the names Roan or Lillian Wallis mean anything? Or that something happened about nine months ago?"

  For a second I thought they hadn't understood me, their faces looked entirely too blank. But then I realised they were both a little shell-shocked and working through their surprise.

  "Roan McLaren?" Nick asked eventually.

  "Nine months ago?" Ric added.

  "What would any of that have to do with Jaxon Harding?" Nick queried.

  "Or Mitchell Braden Wallis?" Ric offered, slicing a look at the name still up on his screen.

  "Well,
Lillian Wallis has to be a relation, maybe his mother?" I suggested.

  "Where did you see this?" Ric demanded, knowing I would have recalled an image where those names appeared in my past.

  "A letter on Jaxon's desk at home about nine months ago."

  Both men exchanged pertinent looks and then Ric spun to his computer and started pulling up websites searching for Lillian Wallis and cross referencing it with this Roan McLaren. It took five minutes to track down a birth certificate. Another two to bring up Jaxon's - Mitchell's - beside it on the screen.

  "Same mother, different fathers," Nick breathed, clearly astounded to find a connection, let alone this type of connection, between the two men.

  "So, what does this mean?" I asked, flicking glances between them.

  "The motive," Nick suddenly said. "Harding started out as an undercover cop. My bet, to bring Declan King down outside of those already working the case and known to King."

  Ric took up where Nick finished. "It could have been a purely professional decision, because he was good at his job."

  "But it didn't stay that way," Nick added. "Nine months ago his goals changed."

  "Because of who he discovered he was related to," Ric went on. "One of King's adversaries. A man who had been trying to muscle in on King's North Island territory for several years."

  "A man I helped to bring down exactly nine months ago," Nick said, starting to make sense. "A man called Roan McLaren."

  "Mitchell Wallis's unknown half-brother," Ric finished, but I'd already put two and two together.

  "He never mentioned him," I said, feeling strangely put-out that Jaxon had kept this to himself. But then, Jaxon had never talked about his upbringing, always insisting on focusing on mine.

  "It would have been too hard to hide this from the Police had he been aware," Ric offered. "He found out in that letter, when his mother informed him of McLaren being arrested. What was the letter about exactly?"

  I blushed slightly. "I wasn't meant to go in his office, I was searching for a thumb-drive because I didn't have one free. I saw the letter, glanced at it, the names stood out, but I made myself look away." Both men just stared at me. "I remember everything I see," I reminded them. "So I have to make myself not see sometimes."

  "Well," Nick said slowly, moving on from my heartfelt confession. "Now we know why."

  "Yeah," Ric agreed with meaning.

  "This isn't just about you, Nick," I said, surprising both men. "This is about ASI and the part this company played as a whole back then." Nine months ago. Nine months ago when Jaxon Harding came to their attention in connection to Declan King. When Jaxon's goals shifted from solely bringing down King, to involving ASI in the fallout.

  He slowly nodded his head.

  "Fuck!" he barked.

  Yeah, but now we knew who we were dealing with. We even knew why.

  I turned back to C&C's system network; every door open, every file unlocked, every nook and cranny available to me.

  And I suddenly felt invincible. I suddenly felt vindicated. I suddenly felt like it all made perfect sense.

  Because Jaxon hadn't fooled me. He'd truly fallen for me, whilst still on the right side of the law; a right side that was mired in shadows, but it was still right.

  And then his world view changed. And his love for me did too. Twisting into something that could not be called love anymore. Necessity. Obsession. One blinding goal.

  ASI. To bring them down. Like they'd brought his brother down nine months before.

  Chapter 37

  Girl, You Got Some Fine Moves On You

  It was easy after that. Everything seemed so damn easy. I wondered just where it would all turn wrong. But it didn't. And the further I delved into C&C's network system using Sala Lauofo's login and security clearance, the more Jaxon became a clearer picture inside my head.

  Overly confident, arrogant to the extreme. I guess if your sibling is head of a mob syndicate you gain a sense of entitlement. Break a rule here, bend the law there. Doesn't matter. Big brother does far worse and never gets caught.

  Yet he had been caught, and didn't that just put a spanner in Jaxon's - no, Mitchell, I had to start calling him by his real name - works.

  I could see the moment his goal shifted. And it had nothing to do with the time stamp on the file I was currently downloading. Mitchell Wallis started breaking bones. Started shooting bullets from that gun he'd always worn as a prop. Started pushing the drugs, not just overseeing their distribution. Started moving the profits into an off-shore account, under several layers of protection and misdirection, which he could come and grab when this was all over. Started tampering with PaP Holdings, taking down King from the inside.

  Did he plan on getting his brother out of prison? He hadn't visited him at all, in the nine months that Roan McLaren had been behind bars. No, but he'd been funding the activities of some of McLaren's men. Namely a cop named Simon Andrews and a thug named Trevor Church. Both of which were currently awaiting trial for their complicity in Roan McLaren's crimes.

  Mitchell had funded those.

  But there was more. So much more. Files and ledgers and correspondence and bank accounts and finally pictures. All them meticulously labelled, sorted and hidden away in the highest of security locked folders, that only Jaxon Harding and Sala Lauofo could access.

  I downloaded it all. Watched numbly as the man I had thought I'd known became someone else before my eyes. Someone who bypassed even the evil I had begun to suspect and headed into vile and base. Unholy.

  Oh, the images. I'd never get them out of my head.

  "Why the fuck would he keep all of this?" Nick whispered from over my shoulder.

  "Didn't Roan McLaren keep photos of what he'd done to that girl who used to be a friend of Abi's?" Ric asked.

  "Yeah, the sick fuck wanted to brag."

  "There you go then. Runs in the blood."

  I found it, buried in amongst pictures of stacked blocks of plastic wrapped cocaine, money exchanges on shady street corners, smoke filled rooms in what could only be described as blackmail shots; well known men getting it off with, I was thinking disgustedly, under aged girls.

  Holy, fuck. The lewd, dirty and illegal material Mitchell Wallis had on people in this city was insane.

  But there it was. The image. The one where a man knelt on the ground with a bloody blindfold covering his eyes, while his hands were bound behind his back and a gun was firing at his head.

  "That's it?" Ric asked softly to my side.

  "Yeah," I said with a slow nod of my head.

  "Are you going to test it?" he asked, carefully.

  "I don't think I need to."

  "Well, I do," he replied and I sucked in a measured breath of air.

  I understood, really I did. But he didn't need to prove anything to me. I already knew that Eric Shaw was one of the best good guys you could ever meet. The best.

  "There's no need," I countered. "I know you."

  "I know you do," he said, voice scratchy and rough as though it was about to catch. "But I need this."

  "Why?" I pressed.

  "Because," he started, then ran a hand through his messed up dark hair. "Because it's the one thing I'm not sure I'm better than him at."

  Oh, Ric. There is no comparison.

  "You are so far out of his league, Eric Shaw, you're in the stratosphere. You are nothing like him. He wishes," I added. "He's obsessed with being that person. But he hasn't got a show in hell. It comes from inside us. It comes from our heart and soul. Even our experiences, although they mould us, never touch that part of us that is our true being. The people we are meant to be. They say getting drunk brings out the real person you are; happy, aggressive, sexed-up." I shook my head. "I say surviving hell and reaching the other side brings out the real us. And you, babe, you're good through and through. Laced with a little wicked."

  "Fuck, should I leave?" Nick drawled from over our shoulders.

  I smiled, just as Ric said, "Marry me."r />
  "Er, what?" I ineloquently replied.

  "Three years I've fantasised about you. Three years you've been an integral part of my daily life. And these past three days have been more than I could have expected or envisioned or ever desired. You. Amber, you are everything. And I can't live with the fantasy anymore, now that I've found out reality far outstrips it. I can't. Real or bust, baby. This, what we have here, isn't going to go away, it's just going to get better and better. I've loved you for the past three years. I fell in love with you three days ago when I first laid eyes on your face. Backwards? Yeah. But who says we have to follow the rules?"

  He sucked in a deep breath of air, slid off his chair onto his good knee, leaving his bad one at an incredibly painful angle by the looks, and said, gripping both my hands in his, "Marry me. Please. Marry me, Amber Lane."

  I stared into entrancing, bright green, fell further and further with every swirl and fleck of darker green I could see, and smiled.

  It's a remarkable thing, that feeling of utter exhilaration and complete harmony, mixed with an enormous amount of fear.

  The good kind.

  I nodded my head as I whispered out a yes, and then Ric was off his knee and wrapping me up in his arms and kissing me deeply, as Nick laughed in the background and I was vaguely aware he was answering a call that Ric should have been answering, but was too busy tickling my tonsils as I opened further for him and welcomed him home.

  Then the building shook.

  Not just one shudder, but multiple shudders, and my bright, beautiful world came tumbling down.

  "He's here," Nick barked out, as Ric moved to his console and started shifting camera lens angles all around the building, both outside and in.

  "Secure that download, Amber," he ordered, as Nick said into his cellphone, "Pierce, it's happening now."

  I scrambled to my station, brought up the still downloading file and began putting protection algorithms in place, to move the information off site to ASI's backup unit.

  "I've got Lauofo," Ric advised, and I was shocked to hear his voice was steady. Level and in control. "Adam will be pissed he slipped his net," he added.